Sunday, August 29, 2010

People Are Scary

It just occured to me that people in general, gone soft. That meaning, they've lost touch with nature and depend on technology to get them through the day. After working on an isolated farm for three months, I've begun to have a new outlook on life. I was telling my SIL that I'm used to not having much. A minimalist, as I'd call myself.

Take for instance, being on that farm in the hills of Southern Washington and Northern Oregon, I rarely saw people and what people who drove by the house, they were mostly vacationers on four-wheelers going trekking the canyons on their ATVs. And when there weren't anyone around, I'd go about my usual chores of cutting thistle and picking rock. Every now and then, I'd encounter a rattlesnake and it soon found its fate at the blades of my machetes. Oh yes, I've become quite adept with two machetes ... after clearing out acres of thistle a day.

I say people have gone soft is because they depend on their electronic gadgets such as the iPod or iPhone to help them keep in contact with the outside world. Up in the canyons, we don't get cell phone signals and sometimes the rains would flood out the bridge and we'd be stuck out for weeks at a time. On the land, we carry guns or machetes because we never know if there's going to be large predators such as bears, mountain lions or wolves about in the area. I sometimes carried an AR-15 rifle, but was most always comfortable with a machete in my hand.

I posted a profile pic of me with my rifle and immediately a dozen people dropped me off their facebook friends list. Pppftt. Stupid. We had a lot of firearms as home protection since we never knew who or what would visit us.